Friday, October 28, 2011

Things have gone from bad to badder for the self-righteous artsy-fartsy elites, who for all their book-learning and self-regard just can’t figure out America.

The Herman Cain phenomenon is the latest puzzlement of those who only think they’re wise enough and entitled enough to tell the rest of us which fork to use. Mr. Cain’s sin is not that he doesn’t have the usual qualifications for president. Barack Obama established the precedent that presidents can attempt to do the job with on-the-job training. Mr. Cain’s sin is that he demonstrates, with considerable eloquence, that the notion that Republicans and other conservatives are mean-spirited bigots is the enormous lie of conventional media wisdom.

The media elites (and some who only want to be among the elite) are beside themselves with rage. Lawrence O’Donnell’s MSNBC interview is so far the most venomous attack on Mr. Cain, whom he painted as Uncle Tom who sat out both the Vietnam war and the civil-rights revolution when white folks like Mr. O’Donnell were trying to show black folks how to sing and dance. He even asked Mr. Cain whether he was “grateful”—presumably to the white Lords and Ladies Bountiful like Mr. O’Donnell—when he was finally admitted to full citizenship, entitled to a share of the American dream. An Internet blog called AlterNet, which proclaims itself a builder of “community,” flings more lethal venom, finding “black garbage-pail kids fascinating not because of what they believe, but rather because of how they entertain and perform for their white conservative masters.”What makes the elites crazy is that Mr. Reagan transformed the politics of both his country and the world.

The toxic reaction to Herman Cain’s hearty welcome to Republican and conservative ranks, his spectacular rise in the polling of Republican voters, is a grim preview of what lies ahead. The liberals (“progressives,” as they call themselves this year) are not actually frightened by the prospect of President Cain; they recognize, given the givens, the high improbability of that happening. What irks, galls, frustrates and infuriates the eastcoast libsnobs is that the Republican embrace of the pizza man destroys the story line they want to reprise from 2008, that only bigots oppose President Obama.

In fairness to the facts, the diehards on the left tried similar insults of Ronald Reagan, too. When he died, recognized widely as the man who won the Cold War and put the Soviets in their place, they couldn’t even be gracious to the memory of the dead. The tattered remnants of what was left of the counterculture cried tears of baffled frustration that the passage of only a little more than a decade had conferred universal recognition of the remarkable accomplishments of the 40th president.

The Internet sites where embittered lefties gather to trade their toxins—“you show me yours and I’ll show you mine”—were aglow once more with incendiary hatred. The Gipper was called a “stupid lizard;” one best-selling author said of him: “Killer, coward, con man—Ronald Reagan, goodbye and good riddance.” Ted Rall, a syndicated cartoonist, gloated over the Gipper’s death, certain that he was at last with Old Scratch: “I’m sure he’s turning crispy brown right about now.” A “gay activist” (another aspiring theologian) wrote that Mr. Reagan would “spend eternity in hell” because he was “responsible for 500,000 American AIDS deaths and 10 million worldwide,” which if true would have made the Gipper the studliest and busiest man in the bathhouse.

What turns these unworthies a deep shade of rage red is not that they think Ronald Reagan actually fit any of their mean descriptions, but that he transformed the politics not only of his country but of the world. Margaret Thatcher got it right when she said more than two decades ago that Mr. Reagan’s greatest accomplishment was that “he has achieved the most difficult of political tasks, changing attitudes and perceptions about what is possible.”

In a much smaller way, Herman Cain has also achieved that most difficult of political tasks. He, too, has changed attitudes and perceptions about what is possible. The most remarkable fact about the Cain phenomenon is that three years after Barack Obama’s incompetence began to reveal itself, the other party, painted in vivid color as benighted and bigoted, demonstrates that it will happily consider a black candidate, too. The prospect of a choice between a black Democrat and a black Republican is the tale that beggars anything Hollywood could imagine.

This reality owes nothing to the media, politicians of any stripe, or to the self-righteious elites. It owes everything to the ordinary men and women of the America that is great because America is good.

Thursday, October 27, 2011

Lately, on his never ending campaign trail, Barack Hussein Obama has be chanting the same refrain over and over: "We can't wait for Congress to act!"

I just listened to Karl Rove say in an interview that Obama's repetition of that phrase is just a campaign slogan. I think that Rove is wrong.My intuition is that Obama is softening up the American public to accept his exercise of raw executive power through the issuance of more Executive Orders just like the one he issued last waiving the rules of student loans, bypassing Congress who's right it is under the Constitution tolegislate.

Governing by Executive Order rather than by engaging in the political process of working with Congress to achieve changes in any law is a prelude to the establishment of government by decree and that is something that is characteristic of dictatorships, not a republican demoncracy.American can hardly afford to wait beyond November 06, 2012 to end this unconstitutional presidency.

Friday, October 21, 2011

Mr. Biden is endearing in the way of crazy uncles, but someone left the attic door unlatched.

UNHAPPY TIMES AT THE WHITE HOUSE

by Wesley Pruden

Good old Joe, always good for a laugh.

However, that’s not President Obama or the White House wise men holding their sides and rolling on the floor. Joe is endearing enough in the way of crazy uncles, but when the attic door is left unlatched someone has to be dispatched to find old Joe and pay for the damage.

Joe has lately been wandering around the country trying to drum up support for the Obama jobs bill by blaming the Republicans for the regiments of rapists he sees stalking the land. He reminded an audience in Michigan that when the number of cops in Flint was reduced, violent crime increased. The Republicans in Congress oppose the jobs bill. Ergo, it’s the Republicans’ fault that so many evil men have taken up raping.

Joe got his usual laughs in the usual places, but only groans from the president’s wise men, who know better. When a reporter for Human Events, the Washington political weekly, asked Joe later at an appearance at the University of Pennsylvania whether he wanted to amend his remarks, the veep practically went postal. He shoved his finger at the reporter’s chest and let him have a bit of schoolyard bluster and bloviation. “I didn’t use, no, no, no . . . Let’s get it straight, guy. Don’t screw around with me.” (And my daddy can lick your daddy.)

It’s not just old Joe. Alarm is the soup du jour not only at the White House mess, but wherever Democrats gather to groan. President Obama, winding up his bus tour of Virginia to pump a little energy into faithful fans of his $447 billion jobs package, reminded a small gathering at a firehouse in a suburb of Richmond that $35 billion of the package would go to prevent layoffs of cops and firemen. When only two people applauded, the president said: “You can go ahead and clap. Go ahead, nothing wrong with it.”

The president and his men look and sound rattled, as any serious man would be, by all the signs and slights evident everywhere they look. He put Michelle out to raise money (for $2,500, contributors can get their pictures taken with her). Someone even stole his Teleprompter. But not all the news is bad. Nancy Pelosi is said to be not talking to him.

The president’s embrace of the so-called Wall Street occupiers, after first keeping his distance, hints of reluctant romancing. All the girls, as the song goes, get prettier at closing time. The protests obviously appeal to a community organizer’s instincts and sympathies, but pollsters are telling him that the public hasn’t yet decided whether it likes or loathes the occupiers.

So far there’s no indication that Occupy Wall Street is the terrific ‘60s writ large, or even small. A new Gallup Poll, taken for USA Today, finds that 22 percent of the respondents approve of the movement’s goals and 15 percent disapprove; 25 percent approve of the conduct of the occupiers and 20 percent disapprove. The figure that most of the pols see writ largest is the 63 percent who say they just don’t know enough about the movement to know what to think of it.

When Doug Schoen, a Democratic pollster, sent an agent to Zucotti Park, where the protests began, to make inquiries, he got back surprising data. Only 198 occupiers were polled, so this was hardly a scientific sampling, but an experienced pollster nevertheless is careful about whom he talks to. Only 48 percent say they will vote for Mr. Obama next year. Only about 15 percent are unemployed, and clearly aren’t the downtrodden “99 percent” they claim they are. However, “We’re the 85 percent” wouldn’t make much of a message on a tee shirt.

For sure, the protest at Zucotti Park is not a grit and granola operation imported whole from the fab ‘60s. “We’re running a five-star restaurant down there,” Eric Smith, 38, the ex-le Chef de Tournant at the Sheraton in midtown Manhattan, tells the New York Post. He works in a soup kitchen that cooks a thousand meals a day for the occupiers. “The other day, we made some wonderful salmon cakes with dill sauce and some quinoa salad and a wonderful tomato salad with fennel and red onion,’’ he said. “We use organic grass-fed meats, and the other day we made a wonderful fried rice and root vegetables and all kinds of soup.”

Someone ought to send a plate up to the attic. Joe may be a bit of gasbag, but he’s got the mood of a miserable White House down just right.
Wesley Pruden is editor emeritus of The Washington Times.

<<<<<<<<<<<<<<<>>>>>>>>>>>>>>

One cannot help but wonder whether or not VP Joseph Biden’s wild talk is an indication that maybe his brain tumor has become active again. It is troubling to think that he would succeed to the Presidency if Barack Obama should become incapacitated.
- Leo Rugiens

Presidential candidate Herman Cain, 65, has a master's degree from
Purdue in computer science but learned—from supervising 450
Philadelphia-area Burger Kings and becoming CEO of Godfathers Pizza—that
business management is more art than science. So is marriage: Cain's
has lasted 43 years so far. Here are edited excerpts from an interview
that occurred last month at a WORLD Donors Weekend in Asheville.

Five years ago you learned that you had Stage 4 cancer in your
colon and liver. Thankfully, it's gone now, but how did you take the
news? I didn't even know what it was, so I asked the surgeon,
"What is Stage 4?" His exact words were: "That's as bad as it can get."
He was perfectly blunt with me. He challenged my faith, and one of the
things that strengthened my faith was when I looked at my wife when we
were getting in the car leaving the surgeon's office, and I said, "I can
get through this." She said, "We can get through this."

Did that lead to your current campaign? It made me
painfully aware of how precious life is, and we know not the day that it
could be gone. I had been blessed to achieve my American dreams and
then some. I just wanted to be comfortable. I know the reason I am now
totally cancer free—the chance of survival was only 30 percent—is
because God wanted me to do something different than stay in cruise
control the rest of my life. I never grew up wanting to be president of
the United States. I didn't seriously think about running until Barack
Obama became president and I watched him beginning to destroy this
nation and weaken America.

President Obama talks about job creation from politicians, but
he has no business experience. What has your substantial experience
taught you about job creation? I've learned that (1) if you
remove barriers to entrepreneurial creativity, jobs will be created and
(2) the best job creators will always be the business owners who connect
the best with their people.

How did you improve performance at Burger King? Only
100 of the 450 were company-owned, which meant that my ideas had to be
compelling and the owners needed to clearly see how it was going to
benefit their business. I couldn't change the Whopper. I couldn't
dictate the national advertiser. The one thing that a leader can always
do in any situation is change the attitude of the organization.

So how did you change the attitude? Often leaders
assume that people in their organization know what the keys to success
are. No they don't. Gallup research has shown for decades that only 42
percent of workers worldwide know exactly what is expected of them. We
needed a list of guiding principles. President Reagan was famous for
saying peace through strength. My guiding principle is, peace through
strength and clarity. Employees need to understand that. Another thing
that helps people to be self-motivated is spontaneous unexpected
praise—that-a-boy, that-a-girl—every seven days. Every seven days
compliment your people spontaneously. If you can't catch them doing
something right in seven days, you've got another problem.

How would that apply to being president of the United States? I
talk about commonsense solutions. I intentionally make them easy to be
understood by the general public. If the people understand it, they will
support it and they will demand it. That's my 9-9-9 economic growth and
jobs plan. Throw out the current tax code. Replace it with a 9 percent
corporate tax, a 9 percent tax on personal income, and a 9 percent
national sales tax. The payroll tax, the capital gains tax, and the
death tax all go away.

The income tax started out very small. If we made such a
switch, adding a 9 percent national sales tax, what's to keep it at
9-9-9 rather than 20-20-20? As part of the legislation, we'd
require a two-thirds vote of the Senate to raise the 9-9-9. The other
thing is, the 9-9-9 plan is phase one of my economic vision. Phase 2
would be to totally replace that with a straight national sales tax
called the fair tax. It would also require a two-thirds vote of the
Senate to touch that.

You speak of gaining popular support for that proposal and
others, but the experience of recent presidents has been that the people
are very fickle. I interpret the old military saying "KISS,"
to mean Keep it Sweet and Simple. The previous presidents, including our
current one, have complicated matters. People are trying to take care
of their families and run their businesses. They don't have time to read
a 2,700-page piece of legislation. I will introduce legislation that is
easier to understand. I will appoint cabinet members with leadership
experience, problem solving experience, business experience. In the
current administration, 7 to 8 percent of the appointees have business,
real-world experience. In the Cain administration over 90 percent of the
people will have had a real job in the private sector.

You've been debating other presidential candidates. Would you put any of them in your cabinet?
Yes. I would respectfully request Speaker Gingrich to be secretary of
State. ... I would ask Mitt Romney to consider two jobs: chairman of the
Federal Reserve Board of Governors or Treasury secretary. I would give
Paul Ryan those same two options also. Representative Michele
Bachmann—yes, I could see her being in a Herman Cain cabinet, but I
haven't figured out what position yet. I have a lot of respect for her.

You've talked about S.I.N. among liberals—shift the subject,
ignore the facts, name-calling. Do you ever see S.I.N. among
conservatives? That's deep, doc. Not all conservatives are
created equal so there are some that will try shift the subject and
ignore the facts—but you don't have a lot of name-calling coming from
conservatives like we have coming from liberals.

I'll go deeper. What difference does it make whether a person
believes in evolution or a person believes that God created the world?
None. I happen to be a believer, and I believe that God created the
world.... My faith I put right front and center. And I won't apologize
for it. I realize there are some people who do not share my faith;
that's why this country was created. So to try to make an issue out of
"Do you believe what's in the Bible about God creating the earth and
universe vs. the evolutionary theory?"—I don't think that's relevant to
turning this economy around and protecting this nation.

Listen to a report on Herman Cain from the Oct. 15 edition of the radio program The World and Everything in It.

Ho Hum, a Black Candidate

Though Herman Cain's race does agitate some on the left.

Reader Jeryl Bier, who passed along the piece from CNN.com,
took offense at the headline:

"Cain's Race Not as Big an Issue With
Conservatives as Obama's Was Three Years Ago."

Writes Bier: "There is
absolutely nothing in the article that supports the headline. Where is
the evidence that Obama's race was an issue with conservatives three
years ago? On the contrary, his supporters are much more vocal about
Obama's race than his detractors are."

True--so true, in fact, that it looks to us as though the headline
writer was sloppy rather than tendentious. The comparison is between
conservatives' reaction to Cain today and liberals' reaction to Obama
then, or, to put it another way, between Cain's and Obama's appeal to
the respective party bases.

Associated Press

Cain on the trail.

The text makes that quite clear. As
reporter Shannon Travis notes:

"Many conservatives decry the focus on a
candidate's race as an obsession for liberals."

Travis cites an example
from a rival network that shows why conservatives are right on this
point:

"Recently, in an interview with MSNBC, host Lawrence O'Donnell
pressed Cain: Why didn't he participate in the civil rights movement?"
This actually doesn't quite do the exchange justice: O'Donnell, a person of pallor, berates Cain for being insufficiently committed to civil rights half a century ago.

"There's a second reason that some conservatives, particularly tea
partiers, largely ignore Cain's race," Travis notes: "it drives a stake
through claims that the movement harbors racists." This seems to us a
reversal of cause and effect. Conservatives and Tea Partiers ignore
Cain's race not because they have something to prove but because they
didn't care much about race to begin with.

Cain has, as Travis notes, "waded into the 'who's more black'
controversy--him or Obama," telling radio host Neal Boortz: that Obama
has "never been part of the black experience in America. I can talk
about that. I can talk about what it really meant to be 'po' before I
was poor." Conservative talkers Laura Ingraham and Rush Limbaugh have
puckishly picked up on the theme that, in Limbaugh's words, "Herman Cain
could be our first authentically black president."

"These barbs from frequent Obama flame-throwers are surely meant as
an intentional diss," Travis observes, going out on a limb. "By any
reasonable measure, the president holds the title of being the first
African-American to occupy the White House." True enough, although it's
worth noting--as we did last year--that whether Obama was "black enough" was a subject of intense controversy within the black community in the early stages of his campaign.

There's one additional reason Cain's race isn't as a big a deal as
Obama's was: The question of whether a black man could be elected
president has now been settled. When John F. Kennedy became the first
Catholic president, it was a big deal. When John Kerry was a contender
to become the second, hardly anyone noticed. We were much more
interested in the possibility of electing the first haughty,
French-looking president who by the way served in Vietnam. And if you
even know that Joe Biden is the first Catholic vice president, you are a
trivia champion.

If Cain's race is a bigger deal than Kerry's or Biden's Catholicism,
it is only because a black Republican is still unusual. That explains
why liberal Democrats like O'Donnell are so agitated about Cain's
political rise. By disproving the claim that Republicans are racist, it
threatens to dissolve the glue that binds blacks to the Democratic
Party.

The Washington Examiner
reports that Ed Schultz, host of MSNBC's "The Mr. Ed Show," has claimed
that Cain "is appealing to white racists in order to win the Republican
primary":

"You think about white Republicans who don't like black
folks," Schultz explained. "It's almost as if this guy is trying to warm
up to them and tell them what they want to hear."

These white Republicans are so racist that they're willing to elect a
black man president just to keep black people down. The absurdity of
that formulation underscores the left's desperation to keep the idea of
racism alive.

Herman Cain, right, talks in August with economic adviser Rich Lowrie, left, and an assistant in Spencer, Iowa.

WSJ's Neil King has details of the latest
WSJ/NBC poll that asked likely Republican primary voters who they
currently support. The poll also reveals Americans' feelings about
President Obama and the economy. AP Photo/Evan Vucci

Mr. Cain liked the idea, but not the name Mr Lowrie came up with.
"We can't call it that," Mr. Cain said during a cab ride through
Nashville in July, according to Mr. Lowrie. Instead, the former
pizza-chain executive, tapping his instinct for marketing, concluded:
"We're just going to call it what it is: 9-9-9." ("What kind of nerd am
I?" Mr. Lowrie says now.)

It has proved to be a significant
moment for Mr. Cain's presidential aspirations. The former Godfather's
Pizza chief executive has emerged as a top-tier candidate for the GOP
nomination, ranking first in the latest Wall Street Journal/NBC poll.
And his plan is getting a significant share of the credit—and
scrutiny—for its simplicity as well as its radical prescription for the
tax code.
"I think people crave the big idea when it comes to taxes," said
Joseph Thorndike, a tax historian who is skeptical of the Cain plan.
"People want to see the system fixed in a fundamental way….This has that
kind of promise." Mr. Thorndike noted that President Reagan had a
similar-sounding idea in 1980—a "10-10-10" plan, representing his
intention to lower taxes by 10% for three successive years.

Mr. Cain's plan clearly has roots in the
Reagan-era antitax movement. In constructing the proposal, Mr. Lowrie
consulted with conservative tax icon Arthur Laffer, often viewed as the
father of supply-side economics. Many conservatives continue to espouse
his view that lower tax rates and a wider tax base can accelerate
investment and production, and even produce greater tax revenue in
certain circumstances. Liberals say Mr. Laffer's ideas led to
over-optimistic assumptions about how low tax rates could go. In fact, Messrs. Cain and Lowrie were
on a trip to Nashville to get Mr. Laffer's blessing for their plan when
it was given its name, according to Mr. Lowrie. He said that during
their meeting, Mr. Laffer wrote an "A+" on the document and signed it as
a souvenir.
Mr. Laffer confirmed the meeting and said he "could well have done
something like that," but doesn't specifically recall giving the plan a
grade. He said Mr. Cain's principles on taxation are "really sound," and
that Mr. Cain himself is a "world-class candidate," but he also praised
several other GOP candidates. In a statement Thursday, Mr. Laffer
said Mr. Cain's plan "would be a vast improvement over the current tax
system and a boon to the U.S. economy."

The "9-9-9" plan would essentially
scrap the existing tax code and replace it with just 9% tax rates on
income, businesses and sales. Current taxes on investments would be
eliminated or reduced, and payroll taxes also would be eliminated along
with virtually all itemized deductions.

In practice, Mr. Lowrie's design combines two ideas that have figured
prominently in conservative tax debates in recent years. One idea is a
flat tax (Mr. Laffer for years has championed this idea.) The other is a
national sales tax.

Herman Cain described his 9-9-9 tax plan as
one that will raise as much money as the current system, maybe more, and
have more people paying taxes. John McKinnon on The News Hub discusses
whether the plan really adds up.

Admirers see
it as a breath of fresh air in what is often a stultifying debate over
how to rewrite the mammoth U.S. tax code. Many conservative economists
have praised the Cain approach's shift to taxing consumption while
encouraging savings and investment. But some business
people—particularly retailers but also home builders—cringe at the
prospect of a national sales tax. And liberals worry it would raise
taxes on lower-income people,or deepen the current deficits, or maybe
both.

Mr. Lowrie, a 47-year-old wealth-management adviser for Wells Fargo
Advisors in the Cleveland area, has studied conservative tax theory for
years. He has known Mr. Laffer for about 20 years through his work, he
said. He first encountered Mr. Cain at a conservative conference in
2004. When Mr. Cain was looking for an economic adviser, Mr. Lowrie said
he was excited by the opportunity. A Cain campaign spokesman confirmed
details of Mr. Lowrie's account, including the development of the 9-9-9
plan.

Mr. Lowrie doesn't have an advanced
economics degree, but said that isn't a hindrance. "You don't need a
Ph.D. to understand a few simple truths of economics, any more than you
need a Ph.D. to know what will happen when you hold a bowling ball over
your foot and drop it," he said.
A longtime collector of Ronald Reagan campaign buttons, Mr. Lowrie
has cultivated a smaller collection of baseballs signed by his economics
heroes, including Mr. Laffer. "These are my go-to guys," he said.

<<<<<<<<<<<<<<<<<<<<<<<<<<>>>>>>>>>>>>>>>>>>>>>>>>>>>>>

While I do not particularly like the idea of a national sales tax, I am not worried about it since I know that it stands little chance of making it through Congress. But the 9-9-9 Plan offers a springboard for Congress to drastically reform the monstrous tax code and while the final product may not contain a sales tax, it will be a vast improvement over the present tax system.

The Truth About Advertising

College know-it-all hippies lead the left hilariously astray.

They call themselves Krugman's Army, but they're really just college know-it-all hippies:
"See, the corporations are trying to turn you into little Eichmanns so
that they can make money." "The corporations run the entire world, and
now they've fooled you into working for them." "We just spent our first
semester in college. The professors opened our eyes. The government is
using its corporate ties to make you sell magazines so they can get
rich." Or, as former Enron adviser Herr Doktor Professor General Paul Krugman himself puts it, "these people" are "destroying the world."

The New York Times Co., the corporation that employs Herr Doktor
Professor General Krugman to help sell newspapers, has invited one of
those eye-opening professors to expound on the ideas that animate the
college know-it-all hippies. His name is Gary Gutting, he teaches philosophy at Notre Dame, and he makes the following claim:

Corporations are a particular threat to truth, a value
essential in a democracy, which places a premium on the informed
decisions of individual citizens. The corporate threat is most apparent
in advertising, which explicitly aims at convincing us to prefer a
product regardless of its actual merit.

Gutting goes on to argue that it is even more insidious for
corporations to try to influence "debates over public policy,"
apparently oblivious to the irony that, under the aegis of the New York
Times Co., he is doing just that.

SouthParkStudios.com

College know-it-all hippies

But Gutting's throwaway line about
advertising was what got our attention, for it reveals more than we
suspect he realizes. For one thing, it reveals that he has fallen short
of the assignment the Times gave him, which is to "apply critical
thinking." A moment of critical thinking applied to his description of
advertising shows it to be nonsense.

It is at best an overgeneralization to say that advertising "aims at
convincing us to prefer a product regardless of its actual merit." It is
ludicrous to say, as Gutting does, that it explicitly does so.
To see why, consider a familiar slogan of a well-known media company:
"All the news that's fit to print." A Gutting-style slogan, by contrast,
would be something along the lines of "Biased and poorly written.
Subscribe today!"

In reality, advertising seeks to persuade consumers of a product's
merits. Often, as in the case of "All the news that's fit to print,"
these merits are intangible--status, image, reputation. Although Gutting
isn't clear on this point, we gather he means to draw a distinction
between such intangibles and "actual merits," which can be quantified or
at least described in concrete qualitative terms.

But there's nothing deceptive about trading on status, image or
reputation. If the company in our example fails to deliver "all the news
that's fit to print," its customers will figure it out for themselves
and take their business to a competitor. Those who fail to do so are
only fooling themselves.

Of course some advertising is deceptive or fraudulent, but commercial
speech is subjected to considerable consumer-protection regulation. By
contrast, freedom of political speech in America is nearly absolute.
That is as it should be, but it also means you are much more likely to
get a bill of goods when you vote for a political candidate than when
you buy a car or a box of cereal.

What we find fascinating, however, is the degree to which the left
seems to be mesmerized by what it views as the dark arts of advertising
and public relations. Progressives imagine that advertising works the
way Gutting describes it, that their political opponents use the same
techniques as commercial corporations, and that their side will enjoy
political success if only it learns to do the same.
When that doesn't work, they really get confused. A hilarious example comes from Bob Cesca, a "media producer" who writes for the Puffington Host:

When I heard President Obama announce The American Jobs Act,
I mistakenly thought the Republicans wouldn't dare vote against
"American jobs."

For the first time, the Democrats had come up with a title
for a bill that borrowed the successful Republican tactic of naming
legislation in a way that makes it politically impossible to vote
against. You probably remember some of the good ones. The Republicans
aggressively triple-dog-dared members of Congress to vote against the
U.S.A. PATRIOT Act. After all, who would be idiotic enough to go on
record as having voted against the "USA" and "patriotism", especially
when it's shouted in all-caps during the aftermath of 9/11? . . .

The ultimate irony here is that, despite it all, the
Republicans have a solid chance of winning the White House next year.
Obviously they're counting on the collective attention deficit disorder
of the American voter who will naturally forget about how the Senate
Republicans filibustered the American Jobs Act.

To put it more concisely, the Democrats were counting on the voters
to be stupid enough to clamor for Stimulus Jr. because the Democrats had
named it "American Jobs Act." But their plan may be undone because the
voters are even more stupid and will have forgotten all this a year from now.
We'd venture to say that the opposite is true: Having seen the
so-called Recovery Act squander hundreds of billions without producing a
recovery, voters are smart enough not to fall for that obvious ploy
again.

Another example comes from London's Independent,
where NASA global warmist James Hansen complains that, as the paper
puts it, "climate sceptics are winning the argument with the public over
global warming":

Part of the problem, he said, was that the climate sceptic
lobby employed communications professionals, whereas "scientists are
just barely competent at communicating with the public and don't have
the wherewithal to do it."

The result was, he said, that in recent years "a gap has
opened between what is understood about global warming by the relevant
scientific community, and what's known by the people who need to
know--and that's the public. However there's nothing that has happened
to reduce our scientific conclusion that we are pushing the system into
very dangerous territory, in fact that conclusion has become stronger
over that same time period."

In truth--as exemplified by this very article--most news media
uncritically accept the authority of the so-called climate scientists.
But perhaps people are skeptical because they can see past this empty
appeal to authority; because they understand that skepticism is
essential, not contrary, to science, and because the global warmists'
claims have not been consistent over time. Here's a 1988 New York Times story:

The earth has been warmer in the first five months of this
year than in any comparable period since measurements began 130 years
ago, and the higher temperatures can now be attributed to a
long-expected global warming trend linked to pollution, a space agency
scientist reported today.

Until now, scientists have been cautious about attributing
rising global temperatures of recent years to the predicted global
warming caused by pollutants in the atmosphere, known as the "greenhouse
effect." But today Dr. James E. Hansen of the National Aeronautics and
Space Administration told a Congressional committee that it was 99
percent certain that the warming trend was not a natural variation but
was caused by a buildup of carbon dioxide and other artificial gases in
the atmosphere.

If you joke that global warming must be a hoax because it's cold out
today, global warmists will jump down your throat for ignorantly
ignoring the difference between weather and climate. Yet at the very
outset of the global-warmist hysteria, Hansen himself made the
equivalent argument seriously.
In his Times essay, Gutting approvingly cites a classic example of effective public relations:

In 1982, when seven people in Chicago died from poisoned
Tylenol, Johnson & Johnson appealed to its credo, which makes
concern for its customers a primary corporate goal, and told the entire
truth about what had happened. This honesty turned a potential
public-relations disaster into a triumph.

It's not, however, unfair to ask what Johnson &
Johnson--or any other company--would have done if there were a deceptive
response that seemed likely to prove more profitable in the long run.

Here's an example: Two years ago, a tranche of emails from the
University of East Anglia revealed that scientists were engaging in
deceptive practices to promote global warmism. A series of
"investigations" were undertaken,which turned out to be whitewashes. Now
the global warmists are complaining that they are losing the debate.

The efforts to sell Stimulus Jr. and global warmism have been
ineffective precisely because the public is smart enough to see through
these crude deceptions. The left would benefit politically if it learned
to be as honest as corporate America is. .........................................................................

Democrats Against Democracy, Continued
Since his economic policies have failed, President Obama should seize
dictatorial powers. That at least seems to be the logic one member of
Obama's party is employing, according to the Daily Caller:

Illinois Democratic Rep. Jesse Jackson, Jr. told The Daily
Caller on Wednesday that congressional opposition to the American Jobs
Act is akin to the Confederate "states in rebellion."

Jackson called for full government employment of the 15
million unemployed and said that Obama should "declare a national
emergency" and take "extra-constitutional" action
"administratively"--without the approval of Congress--to tackle
unemployment. . . .

"President Obama tends to idealize--and rightfully
so--Abraham Lincoln, who looked at states in rebellion and he made a
judgment that the government of the United States, while the states are
in rebellion, still had an obligation to function," Jackson told TheDC
at his Capitol Hill office on Wednesday.

If it weren't empty talk, it would be frightening. The Hill
reports, meanwhile, reports that "House Minority Whip Steny Hoyer
suggested Tuesday that voters are to blame for the partisan bickering
and standoffs that have defined Congress this year:

"The American people have every right to be angry [and]
disappointed by the performance of the Congress," Hoyer told reporters
in the Capitol. "Of course, the American people have also elected people
with hard stances, so that to some degree the American people are
realizing the results of their votes.

"If elections have consequences--which I think they do--some
of those consequences are getting what you vote for," Hoyer added. "In
this case, many people voted for people who thought compromise was not
something that they ought to participate in."

There is truth to what Hoyer is saying--but of course the voters will have a chance to revisit the question in just over a year............................................................................

Complacent Chuck
In politics, as in many areas of life, it's important to strike a
balance between optimism and pessimism. One doesn't want to give in too
easily, but neither does one want to be an overly complacent fool. To
judge by this report in the Puffington Host, Sen. Chuck Schumer has
fallen into the latter trap:

Schumer (D-N.Y.) was bullish on Wednesday on the Democratic
Party's chances in the 2012 election, saying the party is likely to keep
incumbents in office and pick up a few others.

"I think it's moving in the right direction," he said during
a breakfast at moderate think tank Third Way. "It's almost impossible
to say we'll lose the Senate, unless the roof falls in."

Almost impossible? The Democrats have 23 seats
up to the Republicans' 10. The GOP needs four seats (or three if
President Obama loses) to take a Senate majority. Prognosticator Larry
Sabato lists one Democratic seat, in North Dakota, as a likely GOP
pickup and six Democratic seats--in Missouri, Montana, Nebraska, New
Mexico, Virginia and Wisconsin--as toss-ups.
No Republican seats rate as toss-ups according to Sabato, but Schumer sees opportunities:

By blaming the Tea Party, Schumer said Democrats may be able
to pick up "a seat or two" in Indiana, Nevada, Arizona and
Massachusetts, where Democrat Elizabeth Warren is taking on Republican
Sen. Scott Brown.

We'd say Democrats have a reasonable shot in Massachusetts (rated
"Leans R" by Sabato). But then there are also several Democratic seats
that only "lean" toward the incumbent party: Florida, Hawaii, New
Jersey, Ohio and West Virginia.

One can quibble with Sabato's ratings: We'd reckon Massachusetts a
toss-up and Nebraska a likely Republican pickup, for instance. But the
overall picture is clear: Republicans have considerably more
opportunities to gain Senate seats than Democrats do. It's not
impossible that the donks will hold the majority, but it's far from
impossible that they won't.

WHETHER PRAISING THE MOB OCCUPYING WALL
STREET OR SABOTAGING THE DEFENSE OF THE DEFENSE OF MARRIAGE ACT, OBAMA
REVEALS HIS SAUL ALINSKY ROOTS

Is the Age of Obama ushering in an Era of Thuggery by his left-wing supporters?

Barack Obama has made clear his admiration of Saul Alinsky, the radical “father” of community organizing. Peter Slevin of the Washington Post
wrote in 2007 that “Obama embraced many of Alinsky’s tactics and
recently said his years as an organizer gave him the best education of
his life.”
Alinsky, who died in 1971, was known for his belief that
revolutionaries must stir up the downtrodden to become angry enough at
their condition to demand its betterment. In his famous book Rules for Radicals,
Alinsky acknowledged his debt to Lucifer, “the very first radical,” who
“rebelled against the establishment and did it so effectively that he
at least won his own kingdom.”

When it came to the best way to achieve revolution, Alinsky explictly
argued for moral relativism in fighting the establishment: “In war the
end justifies almost any means.” Specifically, “the practical
revolutionary will understand… [that] in action, one does not always
enjoy the luxury of a decision that is consistent both with one’s
individual conscience and the good of mankind.”

It appears that the left has decided to throw conscience aside and
put the raw exercise of political power first. Consider three separate
news stories that developed within the same week in late April:
• When Attorney General Eric Holder decided to no longer uphold the
constitutionality of the 1996 Defense of Marriage Act, or DOMA, the U.S.
House hired the Atlanta-based law firm of King and Spalding to defend
it in court. The law defines marriage as between a man and a woman and
says states aren’t obliged to honor gay marriages recognized in other
states.
But within days of being hired the firm dropped the House as a
client, claiming the firm had failed in properly “vetting” the issue.
Former Bush solicitor general Paul Clement, who had brought the case to
King and Spalding, resigned from the firm in protest.

The real reason the case was dropped was the campaign launched by the
Human Rights Campaign to “educate” (read: intimidate) the firm’s
clients about “King and Spalding’s decision to promote discrimination.”
Never mind that like 84 other senators Vice President Joe Biden had
voted for the bill. Or that Holder’s old boss Bill Clinton signed it.
Anyone who now touched the issue was to be branded a bigot. “Gay rights
activists argue that DOMA is unconstitutional,” notes San Francisco Chronicle columnist Debra Saunders. “If they’re so sure, why are they trying to prevent good lawyers from defending it?”

• California Democratic leaders, frustrated by the refusal of
Republican state legislators to go along with tax increases to close the
state’s $15.4 billion deficit, are threatening to focus budget cuts on
the districts those Republicans represent.
“You don’t want to pay for government, well then, you get less of
it,” Senate president pro tem Darrell Steinberg told reporters in late
April. Steinberg echoed comments made by Treasurer Bill Lockyer, who
told reporters that budget cuts should be targeted at the districts of
lawmakers who oppose putting $11 billion in tax increases before the
state’s voters in a referendum.
“When it comes to kids or the vulnerable, I wouldn’t want to make
distinctions between who lives in a Democratic district and who lives in
a Republican district, but when it comes to sort of basic services,
convenience services that affect adults…I have an open mind,” Steinberg
told reporters.
A spokeswoman for Bob Dutton, the Senate’s Republican leader, reacted
quickly to the bully-boy tactics. “It only means Democrats are
unwilling to stand up to public employee unions,” said Jann Taber.
“They’d rather cut services to Californians than fix bloated public
employee pension systems. Clearly this isn’t an attempt to craft a true
bipartisan budget solution.”

Local officials in districts represented by Republicans called the tactic completely counterproductive.
“That is shameless extortion,” Butte County supervisor Larry Wahl told the Sacramento Bee.
“He’s trying to get me to call [Assemblyman Dan] Logue and [state
Sen.] Doug LaMalfa and say ‘Raise our taxes.’ I’m not going to do that.”

But Democrats aren’t backing down from their threat. “It’s really a
simple concept,” said Lockyer spokesman Tom Dresslar. “If we have to
adopt an all-cuts budget because voters aren’t even given the chance to
decide the tax issue, then we engage in another democratic process. The
folks who want less government get less government. It’s not vindictive,
it’s democracy in action.”

Actually, there’s another name for it. Targeting the constituents of
elected representatives for budget cuts is a tactic worthy of a banana
republic, which California is in danger of resembling as it refuses to
deal with its budget realities in a serious way.

• Some bitter Wisconsin public employees, thwarted in their attempt
to defeat a conservative Supreme Court justice last April as part of
their campaign to derail GOP governor Scott Walker’s collective
bargaining reforms, are endorsing vandalism against companies that
contributed to Mr. Walker’s campaign.

On May 1, anonymous liberal activists demanded that defamatory
stickers be placed on consumer products produced by companies that have
donated to Mr. Walker. Internet websites have posted stickers that
single out Angel Soft tissue paper (“Wiping your [expletive] on
Wisconsin workers”), Johnsonville Sausage (“These Brats Bust Unions”)
and Coors (“Labor Rights Flow Away Like A Mountain Stream”). No doubt
for purposes of encouragement, a “Stick It To Walker” website displayed
photographs of actual vandalized Angel Soft tissue packages in a New
York supermarket.
More locally, AFSCME’s Wisconsin Local 24 has circulated letters to
businesses in the state that have declined to display signs in their
windows backing the union’s anti-Walker political agenda. The letter was
clear that neutrality in the battle between Governor Walker and the
unions would not be tolerated. “Failure to do so will leave us no choice
but [to] do a public boycott of your business. And sorry, neutral means
‘no’ to those who work for the largest employer in the area and are
union members.” The only thing missing in the letter from the Wisconsin
union was the old organized crime line: “Nice business you have there.
Would be a shame if something happened to it.”

IN HIS EPIC 1960s poem The Incredible Bread Machine, R. W.
Grant described an entrepreneur named Tom Smith who ran afoul of jealous
competitors and a power-seeking Justice Department. When Smith appears
before the judge, he asks plaintively why he has been singled out. The
judge looks down on him and intones: “In complex times the Rule of Law
has proved itself deficient. We much prefer the Rule of Men, it’s vastly
more efficient.”

It appears that more and more people on the left have decided that
the Rule of Law will have to give way to their version of the Rule of
Men.

About the Author

John H. Fund is a senior editor of The American Spectator and author of the Stealing Elections (Encounter Books).

As a mathematician he would teach the incumbent a thing or two
about "simple math."

Let us assume that the field bidding to be the Republican
standard bearer in 2012 will not expand. Let us assume also that
neither New Jersey Governor Chris Christie nor Sarah Palin will
throw their hat into the ring. Let us further assume that neither
Mike Huckabee nor Paul Ryan is having second thoughts. In which
case, Mitt Romney is still the frontrunner. Yet conservatives
appear no more prepared to embrace him now than they were in 2008.
Rick Perry hasn't proved a viable alternative and Michele
Bachmann's fifteen minutes is up. Over the past week or so, with
straw poll triumphs in Florida and Illinois, Herman Cain has begun
to strike the
right chord with Republican voters and has seen his
poll numbers rise. So here are nine reasons why Republicans
should nominate Herman Cain for President.

1. He Has No Sense of
Entitlement
Cain wasn't born into a life of privilege. Yet he bore no
resentment because of it. He believed in the American Dream yet
understood he had to work hard for it. Cain set goals for himself
and made sure he had the education necessary to attain them. He
found opportunities and seized them. Cain grew up with the
knowledge that the world doesn't owe one a living. He has earned
his place in the world.

2. He Worked at Burger
King
Cain was assigned to
manage some of the least successful Burger King restaurants in the
country and turned them into the most profitable. To do this he
improved service and kept customers satisfied. It would be a
remarkable if Cain could do for the federal government what he did
for Burger King.

3. He Has Never Held Elected
Office
I am not suggesting
there isn't any honor in public service. Unfortunately, many
elected officials (Democrats and Republicans alike) use their
office in service of themselves rather than the people who elect
them. Public officials are preoccupied with re-election and such a
preoccupation doesn't lend itself towards innovation because
innovation is risky and risk can alienate a public official's
donors.
In the food service industry, Cain had to take risk and
innovate or go out of business. At the risk of sounding clichéd,
Cain thinks outside the box. He isn't constrained by conventional
political wisdom and will do what it takes to ensure this country
doesn't go out of business.

4. He Is a
Mathematician
President
Obama tells us that passing his jobs bill is "simple math." Well,
Cain majored in math at Morehouse University. He is in the rare
position of being able to tell President Obama, "I am a trained
mathematician. I have looked at your numbers and can tell you that
they don't add up."

5. He Was a CEO
Hollywood often casts businessmen as villains
and President Obama has spent a great deal of his Presidency
vilifying CEOs (unless, of course, you happen to be the CEO of a
company that got $500 million plus to manufacture expensive solar
panels nobody wanted.) Cain was a successful CEO. But he wasn't
plucked from central casting. He earned his way to the top. Cain
could tell President Obama a thing or two about what CEOs really
do.

6. He Is The Adult in the
Room
Cain is actually only
fifteen years older than President Obama. But he strikes such a
mature image that standing next to Obama he could be mistaken for
his father. In an Obama-Cain debate, President Obama would come off
like a petulant son who thinks he knows everything while Cain would
tell Obama that he has a lot of growing up to do. Frankly, as a
black man, Cain could speak to Obama with a candor the other
candidates could not get away with without being called
racist.

7. He Would Make Liberal Charges of Racism Look
Really, Really Stupid
Actress Janeane Garofalo infamously said that the Tea Party
was "about hating a black man in the White House" and was "racism
straight up." Yet Cain would end up as one of the most popular
figures in the Tea Party movement. So what does Garofalo have to
say about Cain? Here is what
she recently told Keith Olbermann:

Herman Cain is probably well liked by some of the
Republicans because it hides the racist elements of the Republican
Party. Conservative movement and tea party movement, one in the
same. People like Karl Rove liked to keep the racism very covert.
And so Herman Cain provides this great opportunity say you can say
"Look, this is not a racist, anti-immigrant, anti-female, anti-gay
movement. Look we have a black man."

So in other words, Republicans are so racist they would nominate
a black man in the hope he will be elected President of the United
States. Gee, it doesn't get more racist than that. Left-wing loons
like Garofalo might actually believe this but they are going to
have an awfully tough time convincing people the Republican Party
is racist if they nominate Cain. If Republicans do nominate Cain it
will be because of the content of his character, not the color of
his skin.

8. The Content of His
Character
Herman Cain has
demonstrated that he is a man who carries himself with a sense of
humor, dignity, modesty, responsibility and gratitude towards the
country that allowed him an opportunity to succeed.
Does he know everything he needs to know to be President?
No. But Cain is a quick study. He possesses the diligence necessary
to turn whatever weaknesses he might possess into
strengths.

9. 9-9-9
Now you didn't think I was going to leave this out, did
you?
If implemented, 9-9-9 would represent the most significant
change to our tax system since the income tax was introduced in
1913. It would also represent a significant first step in reducing
the size of the federal government.

About the Author

Herman
Cain hasn't visited Iowa since the Ames Straw Poll in mid-August, but
voters there are apparently in a forgiving mood. Two new polls show the
businessman surging.

According to an
NBC/Marist survey, Mr. Cain is now in second, trailing Mitt Romney
23%-20% in the state. Public Policy Polling is even more optimistic,
showing the pizza magnate with a 30%-22% lead over his Massachusetts
rival, while Rick Perry, Michele Bachmann, and Ron Paul hover around 10%
in both polls.

Perhaps more interesting is
Mr. Cain's potential for growth. According to PPP, not only were Mr.
Cain's backers the firmest in their support, but voters overall were
more likely to name Mr. Cain as their second choice than any other
candidate. Furthermore, the pollsters noted, "[Mr.] Cain is notably the
next choice for both Bachmann and Santorum supporters, perhaps the
candidates most likely to not actually still be in the race by the time
Iowa voting comes around."

The race is far
from won, however. Mr. Cain still badly lags in terms of money and
organization-building -- in Iowa and elsewhere. And his recent surge in
the polls will surely invite further scrutiny by the media, which,
depending on how he responds, could soften up his support.

Mr.
Perry provides a cautionary tale. He surged in the state not long ago,
but a wave of bad press and poor debate performances has buried him in
the standings. Mr. Cain doesn't even need to experience a drop of that
magnitude to find himself in trouble. Given that all the viable
candidates in Iowa are congregated on Mr. Romney's right, it's
conceivable that conservatives will split their votes too many ways.
That gives Mr. Cain little room for error. At the moment, though, the
Georgian is trending in the right direction.

The
scuttlebutt going into Tuesday's debate was that Rick Perry could
revitalize his campaign with a win or kill it with a loss. Most
observers expected some fresh policy and a polished delivery. Mr. Perry
instead

disappeared into the background. He
neither defended his positions on immigration, vaccinations, or Social
Security, nor made more than half-hearted efforts to dislodge Mitt
Romney. He went silent for long stretches of time.

So
why defy the conventional wisdom? It's clear that Mr. Perry is in
trouble. He's dropped to third place (or worse) in Iowa, fallen to the
low single-digits in New Hampshire polls, and, according to Public
Policy Polling, has seen his favorables sink to 23%-57% nationally
(Sarah Palin was at 32%-62% in August). Mitt Romney, meanwhile, is
racking up big-name endorsements and debate wins.

The
question is whether he could successfully wait it out. "Debates are not
my strong suit," he told to Politico -- and he may have enough money to
claw his way back to contention via a different route. If he could
restore his brand through bottom-up campaigning, he might wait for
Herman Cain to immolate, and then reemerge as the anti-Romney.

It
would be risky. The political calendar is still in flux and comeback
timing could be difficult with states jockeying to push up their
primaries. Waiting for voters to become desperate usually isn't the best
way to win their forgiveness. If Mr. Perry still intends to dazzle on
the big stage, next week's debate in Nevada is most likely his last
chance.

Wednesday, October 12, 2011

Cain Vaults to Lead in Poll

Ex-Businessman Passes Perry, Romney Among GOP Voters

THE WALL STREET JOURNAL

Herman Cain described his 9-9-9 tax plan as
one that will raise as much money as the current system, maybe more, and
have more people paying taxes. John McKinnon on The News Hub discusses
whether the plan really adds up.

CONCORD, N.H.—Former restaurant-industry
executive Herman Cain has catapulted to the lead in the race for the
Republican presidential nomination, as GOP voters grow disenchanted with
Texas Gov. Rick Perry and remain wary of former Massachusetts Gov. Mitt
Romney, a new Wall Street Journal/NBC News poll finds.

Drawn by Mr. Cain's blunt, folksy style
in recent debates, 27% of Republican primary voters picked him as their
first choice for the nomination, a jump of 22 percentage points from
six weeks ago.
Mr. Romney held firm in second place at 23%, his same share as in a
Journal poll in late August, while Mr. Perry plummeted to 16%, from 38%
in August.

The poll of 1,000 adults, conducted from Oct. 6-10, comes as many
Republican donors and officials have begun to rally around Mr. Romney as
the party's likely nominee, despite a continued lack of enthusiasm for
him documented in the new poll.

For Mr. Cain, the question is whether his newfound prominence, driven
in part by his signature "9-9-9" plan to overhaul the tax code, will be
a lasting phenomenon in a campaign that has seen many others surge and
then fade. Since the spring, conservatives have given short-lived bursts
of support for a string of contenders, including Donald Trump,
Minnesota Rep. Michele Bachmann and Mr. Perry.

PDF: Results of the Poll

"Will I be the flavor of the week?'' Mr. Cain
said Wednesday in New Hampshire, where reporters followed him as he
addressed the state legislature. "Well, the answer is an emphatic, 'No,'
because Häagen-Dazs black walnut tastes good all the time."

Mr. Cain in many ways isn't operating a traditional campaign. He was
on tour promoting his new book in recent weeks, and he will make stops
between Memphis and Nashville on Friday and Saturday, though Tennessee
is unlikely to factor in the Republican nomination. He doesn't plan to
return to Iowa, site of the first nominating contest, for weeks, his
aides say.

A onetime radio-show host and former chief of Godfather's Pizza, Mr.
Cain, 65 years old, held a New York fund-raiser Wednesday afternoon and
an Ohio finance event Wednesday night. His campaign says it has a paid
staff of 30, compared with more than 80 for Mr. Romney.
Pressed on how much money he had to ramp up his campaign, Mr. Cain
would only say "enough," while insisting that money began to flow after
his win in a Florida Republican straw poll last month. Mr. Cain raised
$2.5 million during the second quarter, and a person close to his
campaign said he isn't likely to have raised significantly more than
that in the quarter that ended last month.

Herman Cain explains why his 9-9-9 tax
proposal is the answer for what ails the U.S. economy, in this excerpt
from the Big Interview with WSJ's Alan Murray.

At a GOP
debate Tuesday, which took place after the poll was conducted, Mr.
Romney called "9-9-9" too simple an answer to reviving the economy. But
some Republicans in the new poll said Mr. Cain's tax plan wasn't the key
to his appeal.

"Herman Cain just makes more sense and
he's more down to earth," said Gerald Holmes, a 71-year-old children's
book illustrator in Perryton, Texas, who is no fan of the Cain tax plan.
Mr. Holmes voted for Sen. John McCain in 2008.

In the Journal poll, Mr. Cain posted strong support among
college-educated males, tea-party backers and those who consider
themselves "very conservative." Mr. Romney drew his strongest support
from those who see themselves as moderate to liberal Republicans.

Pulse of the Poll

"Romney is the remainder man candidate for
the Republican party—acceptable, but not the first choice," said Peter
Hart, a Democratic pollster who directs the WSJ/NBC poll with Republican
pollster Bill McInturff.

After facing weeks of criticism over his support for a law granting
in-state college-tuition rates to illegal immigrants in Texas, Mr. Perry
saw particularly sharp drops in support among men and voters older than
55. His tea-party support dropped to 15% from 45% in August. "The Perry
drop is precipitous, it is everywhere, and it really comes from people
who are watching this race" closely, Mr. Hart said.

Mr. McInturff cautioned against
reading too much into Mr. Cain's bump in numbers. "How quickly
candidates have risen and then, like a soufflé, how quickly they've
fallen back down," he said.

WSJ's Jonathan Weisman reports from Dartmouth
College on Tuesday's GOP presidential debate in which Herman Cain's
'9-9-9' economic plan was attacked by group of panelists. REUTERS/Adam
Hunger

Mr. Romney remains the strongest in a
head-to-head match against President Barack Obama, according to the
poll, trailing the president 46% to 44% among all adults polled. Mr.
Cain lags behind the president by 11 percentage points, while Mr. Perry
trails by 12 points.

Republicans also show signs of warming to Mr. Romney. Nearly
two-thirds of Republicans now say the former private-equity investor has
the knowledge and experience to be president, compared with 45% who
said that in December 2007, when he was also a GOP candidate.

Herman Cain outside of Trump
Towers before a scheduled appearance with real-estate mogul Donald Trump
on Oct. 3 in New York City.

Still, Mr. Romney has yet to stir deep
fervor within the party. Asked how they would feel if he were the
nominee, 39% of Republican primary voters said they would back Mr.
Romney "with enthusiasm." By contrast, 45% of those voters said they
would back Mr. Cain enthusiastically.
Robert Martin, 74, of Beaufort, S.C., says he likes Mr. Romney
because he "has demonstrated the willingness to compromise," and while
he isn't thrilled with the former governor, he said he doesn't want to
support anyone "who is strongly with the tea party."

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About Me

A Texan who loves the truth and hates the lying, cheating, and deliberate prevarication that characterizes so much of our civic discourse these days.
++++++++++++++++++++++++++++++++
RIPOSTE, n. 1. Fencing: a quick thrust after parrying a lunge 2. a quick sharp return in speech or action; counterstroke.
- The Random House Dictionary of the English Language...........
You can contact me by sending an email to me at: leorugiens23@gmail.com